SOUND BANKS and CD roms for EII

[Elmbeatz]

And for those who have no idea about this library:

IT'S THE TITS!! IT'S JUST INCREDIBLE!!!

It's the most perfect collection of sampled instruments ever, honestly!!
It goes like this:
You get an idea, anything (just ANYTHING...) -> just browse the OMI listing and you'll find a bank that fits your idea perfectly! It's so huge...

Coming out of the EII: priceless..

[sheever]

F... Hell:D

thoose disk what i wanted for long time ago...
Xpander,Oberheim and stuffs.
how can i convert that without sound designer?
i need to buy some old floppy drive to connect with my PC and write the translate to the floppys?
cheers awesome group:D

btw i asked Northstar about the disk long ago.
they very helpful and still not expensive.

[Elmbeatz]

F... Hell:D

thoose disk what i wanted for long time ago...
Xpander,Oberheim and stuffs.
how can i convert that without sound designer?
i need to buy some old floppy drive to connect with my PC and write the translate to the floppys?
cheers awesome group:D

btw i asked Northstar about the disk long ago.
they very helpful and still not expensive.

To be perfectly honest:

You NEED a Mac -> EII Setup to get full advantage of the library.

To transfer all banks to floppies would take you forever (plus, you would still have to buy ca. 1500 floppy disks, format them, and copy the banks somehow...). Then, even if you managed to do this (and if your drives still worked after all this  ), you still would have to load each bank from drive to really get to know what's on it etc... (the banks are so distinctive that there are several similar which only vary in fine nuances    )

With SD on Mac, you send the banks to the EII in much less time AND without wearing your drives.
It's really essential to have a SD4EII setup!

greetz,
Elm.

[sheever]

thx ELM,

i understand. and i though i ve got quite lot EII disks:D  ( 43. diks and all original from 1984-88)

it wouldnt be easy to have it thoose mac isnt it?
the other thing do you know guys any chance to have it EII HW packs anywhere?(cpu,ram,chips, etc)
i saqw once on ebay for 200 euro(was quite friendly price) but i lost them.
my EII need to be service cause the sounds has gone only some electric noise coming up if i push any keys.
i read yours guide about it and seems i have to pick up all the chips and put it back.
i wanted to use my darling after founding one of that great sampler which i wanted almost 10 years ago...(actually since DM violator album)

sorry for the off!
and thank you guys the best forum is here:)
S

[dvdborn]

Would it be possible to convert the EII files from the CDROM's to Wave or AIFF?

If I open an EII file in Sound Designer it sounds like sh*t. I can see and hear that there's a header but the samples that follow are distorted.

I know that the EII uses some kind of compression algorithm to store its samples in memory so I understand that just reading the raw EII files won't be suffcient.

Is there a conversion program out there that lets me extract the wave data out of the EII files?

Actually it would be great if there was a program that would just convert the EII files to, for example, a Kontakt patch with the right keymapping.

UPDATE: Never mind, I just used the excellent EMXP program for the first time and it does an excellent job.


David

[Elmbeatz]

I just used the excellent EMXP program for the first time....

?!??
SHAME ON YOU!!!

    Just kidding...

[dvdborn]

Yeah, definitely shame on me. 

I never had the need to try the program since I have a Mac with Alchemy and Sound Designer hooked up to my EIII. That way I can visualy edit the EIII's samples and transfer everything smoothly.

Up until now I never realised how powerful EMXP is. It's going to save me a lot of time when I'll convert some EII banks to the EIII.

David

[rodm99_99]

Hi everyone,

I'm new to this forum. I have an EII with a working CDS3 and all 3 Universe of Sound CDs. I also have the original factory sound disks. I've been transfering the all of the banks (1 bank at a time) via the EII to an old mac. I have also used the wonderful EXMP program to convert individual samples to .wav files, and the I reassign them into Vsampler presets. This is taking me alot of time. Another method I want to try is to convert all the EII banks to EIII banks and use a sample translator tool (such as chicken systems or extream sample converter) to import all the preset information and voice assignments to a modern software sampler. I would also like to possible do a bult translation of all the EII banks. Does anyone have any tips of suggestions of that has worked well for them?

Rod

[wintermute]

Hi,

great job converting the old OMI CDs.
I just have one question concerning the conversion process for esynthesist.
I remember that you told me the sequencer data will be lost when using EMXP. Is this the same with the OMI EII banks? Since I dont know if they contain sequencer data at all...correct me. Are they still intact?

Cheers

[esynthesist]

Sequencer data is only lost when converting EII banks to other samplerformats in EMXP.
The OMI conversion was not done with EMXP of course, it was done with a custom-built little program which 'simply' extracted the soundbank files from the OMI CD-ROMs. No interpretation was done on the contents of the banks, so they are 100% the same as the original ones. If there were sequences in the original ones, they must also be present in the extracted banks.
That being said, it seems to me that most (or all?) of these OMI banks don't have sequences at all.
Can it be true that only Emu themselves invested in adding sequences in their factory banks ?

///E-Synthesist

[Elmbeatz]

I'm sure I still remember some of the NorthStar / OMI Banks with some presets named "play sequence"..
Or am I wrong and mixed that up with the emu banks?!

[wintermute]

I know some Burmer Disks containing sequences but I have no idea about OMI. Is there someone who can verify this?

[rodm99_99]

Hi Everyone,

I believe that there are several banks on the OMI disks that have sequences. In fact, I seem to recall on the original listing documents, if there was a * charactor next to the bank name, it indicated that there was a sequence recorded on the named bank.
On another note, it looked like esynthesist was developing a way to read the Cdroms on a computer and developing a interface to transfer banks, to and from a computer to the eII. I believe there was still an issue with the RS422 integration between the two devices.
Questions for Esynthesist
1. Is that going to be available via an update to EMXP? I tried reading the disks via the virtual drive option on the translator, but I could only see the directory.
2. If that option is available, some up us could help make a stab at the hardware integration. I have a RS422 breakout box, scope, and tools to try to troubleshoot clock, grounds, signal, ect. I'm a little rusty at this, but I try.

One more thing, I believe I speak for all of us on this forum who really appreciate esynthesist hard work that still makes playing with our old emu samplers so much fun!!! Thank you so much!

[esynthesist]

Thank you so much!

You're welcome...

Questions for Esynthesist
1. Is that going to be available via an update to EMXP? I tried reading the disks via the virtual drive option on the translator, but I could only see the directory.
2. If that option is available, some up us could help make a stab at the hardware integration. I have a RS422 breakout box, scope, and tools to try to troubleshoot clock, grounds, signal, ect. I'm a little rusty at this, but I try.

1. The code I wrote until now 'technically works', so it could be included in EMXP but I think it would be better to only release it if it reaches a performance which is similar to the Mac<-->EII communication. People would have to buy a PC device of about 50-80 USD, which is in the same (or even higher) price range as buying a second hand Mac Classic. If the performance would be too low, people may be disappointed...
2. Based on some hardware measurements, I think that the differential amplitude voltage level of the PC transmitted data is about 16% lower than the one sent by the Mac. The EII refuses quite a lot of the commands sent by the PC. This results in re-handshaking, which takes a lot of communication time of course. I was thinking that this could be caused by different voltage levels between the Mac Serial port and the PC RS422 port. But sometimes the communication goes quite well (almost no refused commands): strange !
I also know that my software is sending the commands at a quarter of the speed of the Mac. I'm looking into that right now, but there's almost no overhead code in my program so it will be a challenge to increase this speed. The third possible reason is that the PC and EII are using their own, independent clocks of 500 kHz. The Mac however is externally clocked by the EII clock, which guarantees that they are in sync all the time. Of course I would like the PC RS422 port to be externally clocked by the EII too, but this (as always) is one of those typical Mac features which is not available on standard "PC devices". Of course someone could build a USB-serial PC board with external clocking features but having to buy a non-standard device is not a very attractive idea for most EII users so I think that's not an option.
Well... I'll still do some experiments. If I need exact voltage or timing measurements with a (digital) scope, I'll let you know !

///E-Synthesist
 

[esynthesist]

Guys, I think I'll give up this experiment.
I succeeded in transferring banks from the EII to the PC at a very acceptable speed (about 20 seconds).
But the opposite direction is a complete disaster (sending banks from PC to EII, which unfortunately is much more interesting than receiving banks from the EII).
I'm pretty sure it is caused by the low output level of the transmit pin at PC side. The Mac's transmit signal is very high in comparison to the one of the PC RS422 port. As a result the EII is probably confused about the data it is receiving from the PC, the signal level is simply too low to be reliable.
I could switch to a USB<-->RS232 device instead of an RS422 one, since RS232 uses much higher voltage levels. But this will probably cause problems too: in fact the output signal may be too high and destroy the interface port of the EII (max allowed is 15V while some RS232 can generate 25V). And at the receive side of the RS232 the EII transmitted signal may be too weak to be valid for the RS232 receiver.

So i guess we will have to stick to the old Macs...